Myo armband is a gesture control wearable that tracks hand movements and arm motions. Related in that it is a small wearable that can detect finger movements, which is a similar technology to how we want to detect our finger movements to type braille messages.

The Dot is a device that straps around the wrist like a watch, uses magnets and a grid of pins to create four braille characters at a time that change at adjustable speeds, allowing users to read text messages and use apps on any device via Bluetooth.

A discrete wearable glove that understands finger gestures/movement through a 3-finger Braille system where 3 fingers represent half of a Braille letter. Messages are sent wirelessly to recipient’s glove where a message is read through six mini vibrating motors that represent one whole Braille letter.

Primary ResearchInterview Questions:

Q1: How often do you use your phone while moving? And what do specifically do on it while moving?

Describe the world to the person:A world where upper class people have cybernetic implants that allow them to communicate wirelessly and discreetly and gives them access to information on the internet and supercomputer processing.

Lower class people do not have access to these implants.

Use of computers or other technologies to access the same system is seen with derision by the upper class. Utilizing a device while in motion is outlawed and companies are required to design their hardware to disable themselves when in motion.

Q2: If walking while using a mobile device was illegal how would you feel?

Q3: What would you do to get around that?

Describe the device to interviewee: It’s a glove that detects finger gestures/movement for typing letters and wirelessly sending text messages to other people.

Q4: How would you feel about using that device?

Q5: What do you like and not like about the device?

Overall Points acquired from Interview:

Positive feedback:

Would be discrete and cool way to bypass law

Constructive feedback:

How are messages received?

It would be difficult to learn the Braille language

Complicated idea

Glove is not very discrete, would be easily visible and police can tell you are messaging when moving your fingers

What if finger gestures are accidentally done

Lots of people would get around the law illegally through black market devices or hacking their phone so it can be used in motion

Interview Feedback

After organizing a WAAD, we noticed some common themes…

“How would the user receive output? Would you use an earpiece?” Q5, CR

It seems difficult because you have to memorize your keyboard. How do you read from it. Q4, MC

The device would be cool pretty cool but it doesn’t sound effective and practical. Q4, AP

It’s not really discreet because it’s a glove. What if it’s the summer. If a bunch of people have the gloves. It would be really easy to tell who has it for that purpose. Q4, MC

What about if we spoke to the phone and it wrote for us instead. I don’t see a whole lot of need for that. I could tell Siri. Q4, ZM

Pivoted Solution

Based on the interview feedback, we made some changes…

To make our device more discrete we changed from a glove to a ring.

Due to negative feedback on the difficulty of learning a 3-finger Braille language for typing, we decided to switch to a simpler system finger controlled gestures system.

A finger based gesture system could allow the user to control playing music, getting the weather, and listening to messages.

The ring connects to the user’s phone and allows them to control certain functions through finger gestures connected to the ring.

An audio earpiece will also connect to the phone and give the user audio feedback so they can determine where they are in the UI.

Scenario

The images below represent two scenarios in our fictional world. In the first image, a person tries to use their phone in public while walking and couple of police officers notice and intervene. In the second image, the same person uses our discrete ring finger-gesture audio system in public without anyone taking notice.